


Uncle Keith Said A Bad Word

by Teal_Rainbeau



Series: The Village It Takes [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Also Ava-centric, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bribery, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Keith & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Keith (Voltron) Babysits, Keith (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Keith (Voltron) is a Dork, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Present Tense, Self-Indulgent, Single Parent AU, Single Parent Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teal_Rainbeau/pseuds/Teal_Rainbeau
Summary: Lance warned Keith not to use profanity around his daughter, but Keith slips and does it while dealing with a challenging moment... unaware that Ava is nearby.To strike a balance with the inquisitive four-year-old, he takes her to one of the noisiest locations in St. Luxia suburbia.
Series: The Village It Takes [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535177
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Uncle Keith Said A Bad Word

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Keith and Lance looking like their post-season 8 selves in this AU. Though they’re in their late 20s/early 30s they age slowly considering that they have never fought in inter-planetary wars and live more normal lives. 
> 
> ~*~*~*~*~
> 
> Also, Happy Birthday to me :D

“If I didn’t do that already, I wouldn’t be calling!”

Keith can feel his voice simmering in spite of the even tone that he uses with this incompetent gentleman. How many times does he have to tell this person that the refrigerator’s motor was already going out by the time he came home _yesterday evening?_ Unplugging it and plugging it only works for two-hour increments.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I have a little girl here who’s bound to be hungry when she wakes up…yes, as soon as possible!”

And all he'll be able to "feed" her is a freezer-burned package of chicken nuggets and some crinkled take-out container from the Thai restaurant around the corner.

Regardless, he endures the indefinite on-hold cycle of cheesy Muzac and “encouraging” voices telling him about their customer service packages. Hopefully someone can come out to look at the fridge today…

His stomach sinks at the sickening note of a call dropping.

He rasps out a curse and bangs his clenched fist against the refrigerator door, huffing an angry sigh. Well, time to try again…

“Are you upset, Uncle Keith?” a tinny voice asks from around the corner. It is Ava hiding behind the wall with her head tucked into her shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, honey. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He reaches out to give her skull a brief rub, then stops upon realizing that she’s a little girl, not a Husky.

“I see Papí get mad too, when he’s playing the Mario car game.”

“Yeah…I was playing the get-a-mechanic-out-here game, and the game kicked me out.” He narrows his eyes at his phone.”

Ava’s voice is much more animated this time, “You should call Fix-it Felix Jr.! He has a hammer that when you hit things, they get fixed!”

Who was Fix-it Felix again? And where’s Keith’s own hammer at this time so he can relieve some stress of his own?

He nervously taps the pads of his fingers on the counter while waiting for the stupid number to dial again.

_ “Hello, you have reached Kerberos Appliances_. _Our offices are now closed._ _Please call us back during normal business hours, Monday-Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.”_

“Fan-fu-_dging_ tastic…” he corrects himself.

Weekends really do suck.

At least it's forty-eight outside. That should protect what little nourishment he has until he can call them again first thing Monday. But Monday was a holiday…

He gives up on mentally wrestling with his frustrations and gives Ava a mixed fruit cup he found behind some canned goods.

“These are my favorite!”

“Good.” He sighs favorably while planting himself at the kitchen table next to her.

“Uncle Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“A son is a boy, right?”

“Yeah…” 

“So the b-word has a baby boy?”

“Huh?”

“Because you got mad and you said son of a bi-.”

A weird, distorted mixture of a tut and a wail splashes from his lips, “**Don’t** repeat that!”

_ No cussing around her!_ Lance warned him sternly before giving him the watchful eye gesture and promising to come back this evening. And what did Keith mess around and do?

“Why not?”

He decides to take a page from Pidge’s gamer glossary and use it to his advantage. “Because that word is an advanced word, which means you have to be a level eighteen to say that. You’re a level four.”

“I’m four-years-old.”

“Yeah, that’s the same as your level…”

“What level are you?”

“Thirty.”

“That must mean you’re really, really powerful. And smart. And cool.” She continues to stare up at him, small galaxies of her eyes sparkling and glowing as she sings his praises.

Just how much does this kid look up to him? Yet Lance keeps dropping her off at his measly Bachelor pad where she has her own stuff in her backpack, thank heavens, but otherwise it's just television and a dog for entertainment. 

“Okay, here’s the thing: I promised your dad I wouldn't keep feeding you burgers and keeping you inside all day, wanna go someplace special?”

“Where?” She finishes her fruit and her spoon falls on the tabletop with a jingle.

“Throw that away, put your spoon in the sink, and I’ll tell you.”

Ava does that quickly and even wipes up the small puddle of juice she spilled.

Keith gives her three choices: the toy store, the mall, or some pizzeria place called Stella Starr’s.”

“Stella Starr! Stella Starr!”

Keith holds his palms up, “Whoa! Alright, why that place?”

“Papí said he would take me to buy a doll tomorrow and we _always_ go to the mall.”

Well played.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

After Keith feeds Kosmo and leaves Lance a message detailing his plans, they take a fifteen-minute walk to the gaming plaza, because Lance would be sure to murder him in his sleep for putting his baby girl on a motorcycle. Ava mostly drags him by the hand with both hands clasped around it. Such boundless energy and enthusiasm...

And just as Keith fears, the entrance alone is enough to get him hyperventilating from the cacophony of loud, flashy machinery and of children making any hyper screech they could. He can barely tell how wide or narrow the space really is for all the activity. But the theme is rather…aquatic. Jellyfish streamers hang from the ceiling, the place is dimly lit with blue, pink and orange lights. The illusion of water ripples wave against the walls.

Turns out that Stella Starr is a starfish wearing a sailor girl’s uniform with a microphone in her hand…um…_what is a hand called on a starfish anyway?_

With a New Year’s deal, Keith is able to get unlimited plays between three and six p.m. for the girl. She isn’t permitted to run around on her own because of her age. In other words, he would be wherever she went.

She gets tunnel vision and launches into the first game she sees: a computerized touch-screen floor game where the objective was to stomp on enough fish to win.

“Why are they so fast?” she wails, trying to catch on a few with her Uggs.

“Would you move slowly if _you_ were getting stepped on?”

After calling it quits and waving to other kids, Ava points to the motorcycle arcade racer and smiles with that familiar McClain smirk that reminds Keith of who’s _really the boss_.

“It’s not a real motorcycle! It’s just a game."

“Yeah, I see that…”

“So can I go on? Pleeeease?”

Before fitting her on the bike, he instructs her on how to go fast, how to slow down, etc. He figured it was better for him to control the bike first, then give her a chance to demonstrate what she learned. She’s a quick learner for sure.

“And that’s how you ride the bike. Now you try.”

He lifts her up and set her down, standing next to her for supervision and to move the bike via one handle bar. Ava is enjoying the game despite all the crashing around she's doing.

She yells at the screen. “Hey! You can’t bump into me like that!”

“They’re computers, they do whatever they want.” Keith answers.

Before they know it, yellow Game Over letters transition in a spiral until plastering on the screen.

Ava slides her small body off of the bike with a pout and a fierce point to the screen, “You watch! When I get grown up, I’m gonna play this again and get my revenge!”

After Keith surrenders to a good laugh, he asks her to define what that word means. She declares in a torrent of her own: when you lose and then you come back and win.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Keith follows her around some more while glad that she was having a good time. They come across a basketball game, where Ava asks that Keith show her how to play. But she’s far too small to reach the basket, so Keith figures he could give this a shot. Winning an extra fifty tickets tells him that he is on fire.

Something inside of him tingles and itches to find another game he can conquer.

“Wanna go to _this_ one?” he says a little too enthusiastically, jogging with the child towards a cartoonishly colorful apparatus.

It's a game called Bopping for Bob. An alien dressed like some sort of sea king pops up from a dozen holes to be hit with a mallet, and whoever got more hits wins.

“How good can you play _this_ one?” The child voice carries a tremor of admiration, high-pitched and celebratory. If only Lance were here to see this…

When the gaming whistle sounds, Keith has every intent in making sure that he plays slowly for the child whose hand/eye coordination is barely developed.

Keith finds himself coaching her and pointing out each time the alien creature pops up. Sometimes she would hit the pesky creature too softly and he would stress gently to hit it much harder than that, like a birthday piñata at her party last year.

“This is hard!” She rants with a jitter.

“Take it slow. That’s why I put yours on Easy.”

Twenty tickets were her prize.

Keith was not paying attention to his own course and only receives ten tickets. But this time…

“Ava? Want me to get you a lotta tickets?”

“Yeah!” she balls up her fists in determination.

“Then watch _this_!” he smirks with a childlike furrow of his brows.

This time he presses the LED light with the word “expert” stamped on it. He conquers the obstacles with much more finesse and focus now.

All Ava can do is press her little hands against her cheeks with her mouth formed as a lower-case O.

The last ten are rather tricky because more than two pop up at the same time and will recede into their holes within seconds. Keith almost chokes as the final five freeze in the shape of an X, and it takes the best of his reflexes with a deep breath to get them. But he succeeds despite the mallet nearly slipping out of his hand.

_Did you do all that? What a champion! _

The machine’s alarm rings with a generous serving of three hundred tickets.

“Yeah!” Keith yells in victory along the shower of Ava’s squealing, screaming, and hopping.

After repeating the winning streak ten more times and gathering a fan club of mallet-mashing aficionados, Keith and Ava celebrate their victory with pepperoni pizza.  
  
A newly-won two-foot-tall plush of Stella guards the root beer. She gets her own slice of pizza, too.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Keith digests a mixture of relief and dread as he spots Lance’s car waiting for them at his apartment. Ava has since taken Keith’s back as transportation, yet he manages not to drop the large plush secured in his grip.

“Alright, this camel has arrived at its destination.” He tries to pretend she is not as heavy as she looks when he sees her running towards Lance with Stella Starr cradled in her arms. 

“Whatcha got there, sweet pea?” Lance raises a brow with a smile.

“Uncle Keith and I went to Stella Starr’s and had so much fun! Then he kept hitting this alien frog with a hammer and got a whole lot of tickets, like over a billion of them!”

“Wow! Your uncle musta been in a special mood to take you there, huh?” he flashes him a smile with an undercurrent of a warning. “What do you say?”

“Thank you, Uncle Keith!”

“It was my pleasure, sweetheart.”

He bends down for her to reach and give him a hug. She kisses his cheek before Lance sends her to the car with a loving pat on the back. Keith ignores the butterflies clamoring in his stomach when Lance gives him a narrowed stare.

“Okay, so something happened earlier…”

“_This _should be good.” Lance folds his arms across his chest.

"Lance, she was supposed to be taking a _nap_. But I was on the phone with the appliance people trying to get my fridge fixed. Something happened with the connection and I threw a mini tantrum...”

The man’s hands uncoil from his arm fold and rests on his hips. “Let me guess, she just managed to be within earshot.”

“Yeah.” Keith’s eyes fall to the ground like a child awaiting his consequence. He perked up a little when Lance rested a firm hand on his shoulder.

The other man shrugs with a friendly grin. “Well, what can you do? These things happen. Remember I told you how she can be a mini teleporting ninja?”

“I’m really sorry, Lance. And I’m glad you understand.” 

“Listen, man. I’m thrilled she had fun with you. Not every day a little girl gets a cool, grizzled uncle like you, especially one that’s papí approved. I know she looks up to you, like, _a lot_.”

Keith sighs, waiting for his eyes to scale back on the rare dew that envelops them. 

Lance pats him again and turns towards his car where Ava has gotten much quieter all of a sudden. “Stella Starr’s... Where a kid’ll be a kid, and where an adult’ll atone for his sins. G’night, man.” He waves nonchalantly.

“G’night.” Keith deadpans with a burrowed sigh.

Lance opens the driver door, inviting the faint tune of the Baby Shark melody to pour out. He pauses and yells out to Keith with a frown, “By the way, what did you master to get that sweet plush anyway?

“The Hammer Game.”

“I got 500 on a really good day...” 

“691.” Keith drawls with a spark of smugness.

This makes the other man’s mouth twitch with amusement. “Next time, the three of us are going back up there, and _you _are gonna see a real master at work!”

“Can’t wait.” Keith says dryly.

“No, I’m serious, Kogane!” He points at him like a Pokemon master on a mission.

“I’m sure you are.” He answers back just as nonchalantly as before, witnessing the car rolling away with the family waving vigorously.

Yeah…he sure has learned his lesson.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed ♡  
Follow me on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/teal_rainbeau/) for story snippets, project updates, and more


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